Vaginal cucumber cleanses are all the rage, with the term “vaginal cucumber cleanse” increasing in search interest on Google by 3,450 percent. According to Google Trends, searches for cucumbers and their related usages for cleansing the vagina have increased sharply over the past week and beyond, with terms like “Yoni cucumber cleanse” up 3,200 percent. However, in spite of all the hubbub surrounding YouTube videos like some of those below, which claim that performing a cucumber flush inside the vagina can help to clean the vagina, doctors are warning women against trying the vaginal cucumber cleanse.

As reported by IFL Science, a cucumber cleanse for the vagina is not only unnecessary, it could be dangerous. Women performing the vagina cucumber cleanse ritual are usually instructed to purchase an organic cucumber, peel it, and insert the clean cucumber into the vagina in order to restore the pH level of the vagina, or “yoni,” as vaginas are sometimes called in such videos. As seen in the below viral Facebook post by Gigi Dowell, a peeled cucumber is shown along with a description that claims cucumbers are natural cleansers, and that a peeled organic cucumber in the vagina, mouth, and throat can help clean the orifices of bacteria or viruses.

However, following advice to insert a peeled cucumber into the vagina could be dangerous. As noted by Dr. Jen Gunter, cleaning the vagina with a cucumber first of all makes the flawed assumption that vaginas are naturally dirty and need things like peeled cucumbers to clean them.

Such a presumption is dangerous, because cucumbers — even peeled cucumbers — can be dirty. As seen in the above photo from Hamburg, Germany, cucumbers were suspected as the culprit to potentially carry lethal enterohemorrhagic E. coli bacteria in an outbreak that sickened 400 people in 2011 and allegedly caused at least one death. Ultimately, officials admitted that cucumbers were not the cause, as reported by the Guardian.

However, cucumbers still should not be touted as a vaginal cleansing method that’s effective. Along with cucumbers, Dr. Gunter also warned against using feminine washes found at drugstores to clean vaginas.

Using cucumbers or other vaginal cleansing systems to attempt to clean the vagina can put a woman at risk of getting HIV or gonorrhea, writes Dr. Gunter, and could produce an unpleasant odor. Cucumbers pose the risk of containing fungi that could be transferred to the vagina, not to mention the risk of cucumbers tearing the vaginal wall and perforating the vagina and bladder, as one woman did when she attempted the cucumber vaginal cleanse.